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A Visit to MustardPlaster

The day following the Oxford bloggers meeting I visited MissHathorn in SE London.  Above is a picture of her allotment complex that overlooks the city (click on the image to enlarge).  This complex has hundreds of plots and, compared to mine which has about 100, seems huge.  Fires aren’t allowed on my complex, and it seemed a little strange seeing all these smoldering fires going.

Steph and I had a wonderful time meeting her and her partner, touring her garden together with her beehive and chicken coop, and visiting her allotment.  We had a wonderful lunch that including honey from her bees and several things from her garden.  I think we all found we had a number of things in common.

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Oxford Get-Together

I’m finally back home and have a few minutes to make a post about our Oxford get-together.

The day started off with some coffee and small talk.  Since the weather was so nice we moved outside to give the presentations in the botanic garden itself.  It was really a wonderful setting for the presentations.

Ben from Real Seeds kicked things off with a real eye opening presentation about the history and importance of seed saving.  In the picture you can see him making a timeline.

The recurring theme from Ben is that he wants everyone to save their own seeds.  If you need some seeds to start with, he’s quite happy you buy these from him if you want, but he would really prefer you saved your own seeds so it wasn’t necessary to buy any more.  At the moment business is good, and they don’t really want to expand or sell more seeds.  You can do much more to further the goals of the Real Seed Catalogue by saving your own seed than you can from buying more seeds from them.

Real Seeds has seed saving information on their website, released under a Creative Commons License.  You are welcome to copy and redistribute this information almost any way you want, as long as you don’t charge money for it.

After Ben’s presentation, I talked a bit about my garlic.

The last presentation was Simon (above), who discussed allotment culture and the importance of having a good shed.  His presentation included a mini-quiz game with prizes and a poem.  In all, very enjoyable!

After the presentations we had lunch.  Cat brought a wonderful home made apple pie (with apples from her neighbor), and many others brought samples of things from their gardens.  Ben brought some exploding cucumbers, which we dissected and learned how they worked.

After lunch was the seed exchange.  I had garlic to offer, and many others had self saved seeds.  Kate brought seeds from Wilson in Singapore, as well as from her own garden.  Thank you Wilson!  Ben had exploding cucumber seeds on offer.

We then spent a couple of hours walking around the gardens.  Among other things we saw a number of plants some of us have in our own gardens.  There was an impressive display of Andean tubers, including mashua and yacón.   There were a number of quinoa and amaranth varieties.  There were some heirloom tomatoes in the greenhouse.

Thanks goes out to everyone who took the time to come and make this a complete success!

A special thanks goes out to Ben who travelled from Wales to speak to us, and to Emma who helped with the setup and organization.

You can see posts others made by following the links below:

Daughter of the Soil
Veg Plotting
Spadework
Fluffius Muppetus
Soilman
Manor Stables Vegetable Plot
Hills and Plains Seedsavers
MustardPlaster

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Oxford: Final Update

For those of you coming to the Oxford meeting on 20 September, here is a little last minute information.

Important! Don’t pay the entrance fee at the Botanic Garden.  Just tell them you are there for the Food Growing Bloggers Get-Together.  The entrance fee is included in the price of our room, and I will collect 15 pounds from everyone later to cover our expenses.

There are a few spaces available if anyone still wants to come.  Please email me, leave a comment here or call my mobile number below.  After Thursday it’s safer to call, because I may not have regular access to the Internet as I’ll be traveling.

Tentative Schedule

9:30 – 10:30  Coffee and tea.  Please arrive at this time, and spend a little time chatting with everyone.

10:30 – 11:10  Ben from Real Seeds will give a presetation about seed saving in general and the seeds he sells.

11:15 – 11:30  I will talk a bit about the garlic I’m growing.

11:30 – 11:45  Simon will talk about allotment related things

11:45 – 12:30  Seed swap

12:30 – 1:30  Picnic (indoors if necessary)

1:30 –   5:30  Time to visit the Botanic Garden, or use our room for more coffee and tea.

Route information to the Botaic Garden is here.

My mobile telephone number is:  +31 6 4010 9417

For the picnic, be sure to bring everything you need to eat or drink with (plates, cups, etc).  It also might be handy if you bring something to sit on.  Please try not to bring excess trash, because we are responsible for disposing of our trash ourselves.  We can accommodate a reasonable amount of trash.  Remember to think about bringing things from your garden to share, but don’t worry if you don’t have anything along these lines to offer.

A simple kitchen is available for our use, but we have been asked not to prepare any food there because it is not licensed for catering.  If you need to rinse a few vegetables, need some hot water, or need to do a little washing up afterwards, these should be no problem.

A few people have not yet confirmed.  There is still space if you want to come, but please get in touch first to confirm, because it is still possible we could run out of spaces.  I would also appreciate hearing if you have decided not to come.

People with a * next to their name have confirmed.

Bifurcated Carrots (2)*
MustardPlaster (2)*
Spade Work (1)*
Daughter of the Soil (1)*
The plot thickens (1)*
Joanna’s Food (1)*
Growing Our Own (2)
A Blog Called Fuggles (2)
Veg Plotting (1)*
Soilman’s Allotment Blog (1)*
My Tiny Plot (1)
Manor Stables Veg Plot (2)*
Fluffius Muppetus (1)*
NomeGrown (1)
Hills and Plains (1)*
Speaker: Ben – Real Seeds (1)*

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Festa de Grácia

Grácia is one of Barcelona’s neighborhoods, and by luck we were in Barcelona during their annual street festival.

The neighbors on different streets get together and decorate their street according to a theme.  I think there were around 10 or 15 participating streets this year, and we didn’t make it around to all of them, but a few of the ones we did see were really spectacular.

Here was one street that set up a machine to blow suds:

Grácia Festival

Grácia Festival

The theme of this street was laundry hanging out to dry:

Grácia Festival

This street was celebrating winter:

Grácia Festival

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Barcelona, Spain

Barcelona City Beach

This is more of a beach if you are looking for a sun vacation. Above is a picture of Barcelona’s city beach.

Most of our holiday was spent in Spain this year. Steph and I both studied Spanish for a number of years, but hardly get to use it. We make a point of going to Spain from time to time, so we don’t lose it completely. We both like Barcelona, and there are frequently cheap airfares there. The official language in Barcelona is not Spanish, rather Catalan, but Spanish is widely spoken. Catalan is related to Spanish and often understandable if you speak Spanish.

If you go to Barcelona you can’t help but seeing some Gaudi. Here are two pictures from Park Güell, home to Gaudi for a while and where some of his art is featured.

Here’s Steph in front of the famous Gaudi Lizard:

Steph in Park Güell

Here’s one of the buildings in the park:

Gaudi Building

There was a neighborhood festival while we were there, and I’m going to put some pictures of that in a separate post.